On The Porch with Kisha Jeffries

Between caregiving and a full-time job, one Granville County farmer is cultivating more than crops—she’s growing community support

Kisha (MK) Jeffries works full-time for a lab company and is a founder of Handéwa Farms, alongside her daughters, family and friends. This Afro-Indigenous collective grows hemp for CBD products. They also grow vegetables and melons that are shared in the community.

A farm hub at Handéwa has four spaces where people with insecure housing can stay while working on the farm and getting their feet under them. At Thanksgiving, Handéwa supplied a community meal. “We always give back,” Jeffries said.

“Handéwa” means “generational” in Tutelo-Saponi, and Jeffries hopes that the farm can sustain future generations. It already nourishes two generations, as they care for the land and each other.

Handéwa represents an economic opportunity, but Jeffries also wants to build something that supports people, motivated by the system gaps she navigates as a caregiver.

Jeffries is a caregiver for both her brother and for her adult son, besides farming and working full-time. “Being in a rural area makes it even worse,” she said of the medical options available for family members.

When Jeffries’ brother moved from Durham, North Carolina, to Granville County, it got a lot harder to get the medical care he needed. Her brother needs home visits from a wound nurse, and there simply wasn’t one serving Granville County.

They only live 20 minutes from Durham. “I live right off of 85, exit 202,” Jeffries said.

“Not only that, but he needs physical therapy,” Jeffries said. Her brother has incomplete paraplegia, following a motor vehicle accident.

As the family builds community resilience at Handéwa, they’re also filling in economic gaps. “I have to come out-of-pocket with a lot of things, because there’s nothing here,” Jeffries said.

Kisha’s brother has both Medicaid and Medicare coverage, but fewer at-home services are available in Granville than Durham County. Her son is legally blind and has yet to be able to access services in their “new” home, where they’ve lived for five years.

Jeffries said that her brother was apprehensive that changing his address would impact his ability to access medical care, and his fears have proven true. “He’s not getting any services, and their solution is, ‘Hey, go into a long-term care facility,’” Jeffries said. “He has family that can care for him. The answer for a person’s recovery, for a person’s happiness, for a person’s sanity is not always long-term care, especially when you have family that’s willing to care for you.”

For Jeffries, home-based care isn’t only about dignity. It’s also about recovery, cost and keeping family together. She wants to see Medicaid and Medicare coverage that supports both patients and their families through at-home care—saving significantly on costs to taxpayers and giving patients more independence and a better quality of life.